Colorado Birding

     Just about the time I think we have seen all the birds we can see in the winter here, we hear about a sighting of a Snowy Owl.  Now I have seen plenty of National Geographic specials on the Snowy Owl and not one of them was made here.  This weekend we got up early, for a weekend, picked up our favorite hot drinks and headed east.  We checked around Barr Lake and talked to one of the rangers who gave us very good directions for finding the
Snowy.  It was easy to tell when we were in the right area, lots of slow driving cars, scopes, binoculars and cameras.
    We got updates from several fellow birders that the Snowy Owls had not been sighted yet today, but there was a Great Horned Owl near a farm on the next road. We headed over there and found the elusive owl watching us from the shadows.  A caravan of birders arrived shortly after  we did and surprised us by getting out of their cars, dragging out their scopes and binoculars and scaring the owl off his perch.

We quickly ditched the crowd and headed back over to the Snowy Owl area.  As we drove we collected pictures of two more new birds for us, the Horned Lark and the Meadowlark. We saw several hawks and hawk-like birds bit they were too far off to positively identify or photograph.
 As we waited for signs of a Snowy Owl I thought I better check and see if there were any geocaches in the area, and of course not 60' away was a small cache.  We logged three more similar caches and called it a day.  Thanks again Colorado for exceeding my expectations.  No Snowy Owl but we'll be back.